THE FRONT ROW

First of all, let’s get the housekeeping out of the way. It’s good to have the Arts Club back on the Liverpool music scene. Closed in February of this year, the venue has been taken over by Manchester based Tokyo Industries, the team behind Gorilla and The Deaf Institute. Improvements are obvious. You now enter straight off Seel Street and not via a moody little side door. Once inside you are no longer in a musty corridor, but in a spacious pre-gig bar/chill-out space complete with DJ area, cosy alcoves and comfy couches. Entering the theatre is a new experience as you now need to negotiate a set of industrial, metal stairs, which some patrons chose to use as a viewing platform. Inside the décor is black with splashes of red.

Entering the stage to walk-on music supplied by Pink Floyd, I fully expected support act for the evening, Manchester five piece The Guest List to present us with an interpretation of some psychedelic rock. None of it. It was the first of a couple of dummies that the band were to throw. Opening tune Won’t You Leave Me Alone had an uncomplicated The Strokes rhythmic indie rock feel to it, She’s Not Around was a song in a similar vein.

Just as I’d made you my mind about The Guest List they played a song that instantly had me re-evaluating. Chapel Street was a gentler, passionate, homage to the band’s home town, and it highlighted a more prosaic, melodic depth to the band’s material.

For historical purposes, let it be recorded that the first song played by a headliner at the newly refurbished Arts Club was Cheetah Tongue, from the 2018 album Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life. Following this Matthew Murphy declared ‘OK Liverpool, let’s have it!’, The Wombats launched into Moving To New York, and it’s fairly safe to say that Liverpool did indeed, have ‘it’.

You would expect the odd glitch at the reopening of a venue, but apart from a couple of riggers climbing ladders to fix an errant spotlight, the biggest blip of the evening appeared to be a misplaced inflatable trombone. This presented the crowd with the spectacle of a forlorn looking, six-foot tall Wombat searching the stage for something to blow during Ready For The High. Ever the trooper, the Wombat picked up one of Matthew Murphy’s guitars and blew that instead.

The lower section of the Arts Club Theatre never stopped bouncing as The Wombats progressed energetically through their prodigious back catalogue. Playing in front of a backdrop of 16-bit graphics depicting hearts, lemons, knives, and a rudimentary wombat consisting of of one large white square and six smaller black squares the band blazed through Lemon To A Knife Fight, Kill the Director, Pink Lemonade, and This Car Drives All by Itself.

There were moments of nostalgia as singer Matthew Murphy remembered the first time the band played the venue (many years ago, and to about twenty people), and Dan Haggis fondly reminisced about a twice stitched head wound he acquired following some hi-jinx on near-by Seel Street. Happy days.

The set built to a vibrant climax with If You Leave, I’m Coming With You, Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves), and Greek Tragedy following which the band left the stage to raucous applause.

It was only a faux walk off though. An obvious ploy. No band with a Merseyside genesis is ever not going to play a song whose opening line is ‘I’m back in Liverpool and everything seems the same’. My abiding memory of this gig will be Murph, Tord, and Dan, four Wombats, and 400 hundred sweaty people joyfully prancing to Let’s Dance To Joy Division. So happy, yes we’re so happy.

Ian Dunphy